David Eddings (1931 to 2009) was an American fantasy writer best known for “The Belgariad” and its sequel “The Malloreon”, and for the Sparhawk novels of “The Elenium” and “The Tamuli”. Working with his wife Leigh, who was credited as co-author from 1995, he wrote more than two dozen novels.
Eddings was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in Snohomish, near Puget Sound. He took a BA at Reed College in 1954, served in the US Army, and completed an MA at the University of Washington in 1961. He then worked as a purchaser for Boeing, where he met Leigh, whom he married in 1962, and spent most of the 1960s teaching at Black Hills State College in South Dakota. They later settled in Spokane, where he worked in a grocery shop and wrote in his spare time.
His first published novel was “High Hunt”, a contemporary story about a deer-hunting trip. He turned to fantasy after doodling a map that became the basis of an invented world. He planned “The Belgariad” as a trilogy, but his editor, Lester del Rey, had it issued in five volumes, beginning with “Pawn of Prophecy” in 1982. The series follows Garion and his companions as they recover a sacred stone and then use it against their antagonist, Torak, and it sold strongly from the first book.
“The Malloreon” (1987 to 1991) continued the story in five more books, expanding the setting to the eastern continent of Mallorea. “The Elenium” and “The Tamuli”, three volumes each, follow the Pandion Knight Sparhawk. The Eddingses went back to their first world for two prequels, “Belgarath the Sorcerer” (1995) and “Polgara the Sorceress” (1997), and for “The Rivan Codex” (1998), a collection of the background material behind the series.
Their later books were the standalone fantasy “The Redemption of Althalus” (2000), the Seattle-set thriller “Regina’s Song” (2002) and a final four-volume series, “The Dreamers” (2003 to 2006). Leigh Eddings died in February 2007. David Eddings died in Carson City, Nevada, on 2 June 2009, aged 77, leaving his manuscripts and $18 million to Reed College.
